


dumb gay dorks being dumb soulmates

by Worffan101



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Mildly Cracky, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Useless Lesbians, decided to post this because I'm high on Gender (tm) and don't know wtf I'm doing, mild TW for references to Alex's depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29763399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Worffan101/pseuds/Worffan101
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.
Relationships: Astra/Alex Danvers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41





	dumb gay dorks being dumb soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> hi, I'm high on gender bullshit and have been desperately wishing I was Alex for months if not longer and keep rereading Chyler Leigh's thing about how season 2 helped her come out and so I'm procrastinating on grad school stuff and trying not to hate myself and here have a fic that I tried to make longer a while ago but instead decided to just post this part of it and maybe put in more if it's well-received and I have time/skill/inspiration to do more IDK

When she’s 13, Alex Danvers gets a new sister (who she resents for all of a week before she succumbs to Kara’s puppy-dog eyes and realizes how cool having a sister really is) and a soulmate. 

The former, her parents effectively albeit somewhat apologetically force on her, because Superman dropped a scared, wide-eyed blonde girl at their doorstep on the grounds that he couldn’t keep her in his apartment (apparently, Kara had had a panic attack due to claustrophobia and Superman had realized that a single reporter who also had a side thing as Superman probably couldn’t take good care of a traumatized teenager) and Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers are nothing if not compassionate. The latter, _that_ causes some problems. 

_You Humans are so fragile, it’s a wonder any of you make it out of infancy_ is suddenly tattooed in messy print letters on Alex’s chest, just under her bra line. Eliza and Jeremiah are open-minded people, they can eventually wrap their heads around their daughter dating some Venusian lizard-person with tentacles for legs and paired hemipenes or whatever, but those particular words do not sound like those of a particularly safe and stable soulmate. 

Kara, of course, is nothing but supportive, which makes Alex feel both better and worse at the same time. Because of course Kara is squeezing like a madwoman upon discovering her own shiny new soulmark ( _Wait, how did you get up here without using the elevator?_ in neat, red cursive in a tight spiral over Kara’s heart, which leads to its own lengthy harangues about _never using powers in public_ that Kara is always frustrated by), and Alex gets drawn in to speculating about her new sister’s soulmate, and no matter how much Kara promises to teach anyone who mistreats Alex a Lesson (tm), it still hurts to know that the person the universe has decided is perfect for her is going to be an alien who may or may not have just hurt her unprovoked. 

Of course, Kara comes up with the idea then that Alex will be saved from hurting herself (intentionally or otherwise) by her soulmate, which leads to Eliza nearly banning Alex from leaving the house without permission until Alex breaks her collarbone trying to sneak out late at night before Kara can catch her, which leads to an angry mother-daughter shouting match as Jeremiah deals with a tearful Kara in another room. After that, Alex is allowed to resume normal activities, but is required to check in with her mother once a month to ensure that she isn’t depressed, isn’t allowed weapons in her room, and must take Kara with her when doing anything at all risky just in case. 

It is a grudging but workable compromise, and things are almost looking up. Which is, of course, why Alex’s father disappears two weeks later. 

The universe, you see, hates Alex Danvers and her entire family on a deeply personal level. 

Eliza tries to stay optimistic, but Alex quickly learns when to take Kara out flying so she’s too distracted to hear her mother’s grief. The stress eats at her—she starts getting headaches, snarling in anger at work that she knows how to do but can’t work up the courage to tackle—but Kara is there, with a hug, gently stroking the line of rough letters and humming softly to Alex when she finally breaks down and can’t focus on anything but clutching her head and sobbing in frustration, and Alex almost wishes that she _didn’t_ have a mark, that she could be Kara’s sister and nothing else. 

But she does have the mark, and as Kara insists there’s more to her than just someone’s sister (though the Kryptonian is quick to point out that being her sister is also, like, the best thing ever, and Kara loves her for it), and she doesn’t break down again and she holds it together and gets to college. 

In college, Alex is introduced to the concept of _gay_. It makes her feel _things_. But none of the women she meets say her mark, so after ten or twenty failed dates and one nearly-missed test, Alex decides to forget about the whole mess and just focus on her degree. She’s probably not even gay, anyway. Just a fuckup trying to give herself an excuse. 

This thought process, with Kara at another school studying journalism and Alex trying to go for her doctorate straight out of undergrad, leads Alex to a drunk tank with a mysterious, deep-voiced man offering her a job. 

She takes it. “Secret Agent” isn’t the safest job in the world, but at least Director Henshaw trains her to fight well enough to protect herself from most Human-comparable aliens. And Kara’s not necessarily going to be there, if her soulmate _does_ need some ass-kicking. 

***

Astra only notices the tattoo when she looks in a mirror for the first time since landing on Earth. 

It’s _mostly_ on her back, but one string of it curls up over her shoulder to her collarbone, and she turns in confusion, craning her neck to look at it as it flows down her back like a wave of words. 

The closest thing Fort Rozz has to a doctor does some cursory research and tells her in private that he thinks the tattoo is a soulmate mark, the first thing that her “destined perfect match” will say to her. 

Astra wonders, some nights, staring at the roof of her quarters and trying to shut out the sounds of an entire world, why in Rao’s name her soulmate, not that she believes in such silly things, of course, will feel the need to tell her _SERIOUSLY? Fucking **you**? I was expecting, I mean, I thought you were some kind of Venusian slime lizard with tentacles for legs or something, not a supermodel in a catsuit! And what the hell kind of first words to say to your soulmate are those, anyway? I spent half my life worrying that either my soulmate was going to pick me off of some rocks after a hang-gliding accident or that you were a total creep! And I get you, you unfairly beautiful freaking alien warlord, and we meet when I'm exhausted and my leg's busted and there's sweat running down the crack of my ass and you first talk about how goddamn **fragile** I am and then you stroke my cheek on our first meeting? I waited fifteen years and spent all of elementary and most of middle school being ashamed of having no damn soulmark for this? If I could look away from your eyes and stand up I would slap you **so** hard you wouldn't know what hit you until you woke up in containment..._

Astra is concerned, because the words imply that her soulmate is a Human, first of all, and she truly does find them fragile and worries whenever she interacts with one, and second of all because she really, truly _cannot_ afford this, not when the Humans are tearing this world apart and strip-mining its guts and she _needs_ to complete Myriad and activate it for the Humans’ own sake, as distasteful as the weapon is. 

And third, she really needs to shape up lest she be such a disappointment to her soulmate. 

***

The man known to the world as Hank Henshaw is somewhat overprotective of his surrogate daughter. He isn’t entirely sure when he adopted Agent Danvers in his own mind, but when he overheard her worrying about her soulmate mark after a particularly rough day involving an escaped Khund and a venomous frog alien, he decided that someone, possibly the agent’s Kryptonian foster sister, possibly the man currently calling himself Hank Henshaw, will need to Teach Alex’s Soulmate Some Important Lessons. Just in case. 

It is looking increasingly likely that the man currently calling himself Hank Henshaw will need to Teach Alex’s Soulmate Some Important Lessons, and possibly Teach Alex Herself Some Important Lessons, if his best agent keeps this track record up; Alex has an _incredible_ ability to get into desperate situations with alien hostiles. First it was a Khund, then a Vegan octopus-thing with far too many tentacles (to be fair, it turned out to be a misunderstanding and Dave the Vegan triskadekapus has apologized to Alex several times and vice versa), and a Citadel drone, and a rogue Tamaranean, and so on through the years until finally Alex met an alien she was unprepared for and couldn’t outwit or outfight, and got herself kidnapped by a Hellgrammite. 

The man currently known as Hank Henshaw silently promises himself that he will not kill Agent Danvers’s Hellgrammite captor, admittedly mostly because of the need to interrogate him. 

As for Alex, it’s going to be time for a fatherly lecture. The man currently known as Hank Henshaw has become quite good at those. 

It is, of course, at this point that he gets close enough to the warehouse where Supergirl has tracked her foster sister’s captor to that he can hear Agent Danvers’s thoughts. And that _increasingly likely_ _need to Teach Alex’s Soulmate Some Important Lessons_ becomes _lock this woman behind 18 layers of the best security in the world until I’m satisfied that she will treat Alex with the respect that she deserves_. 

Because of _course_ his _de facto_ adopted family would get mixed up with superpowered alien criminals. 

He tries to remind himself that it’s entirely possible that Alex’s soulmate is a perfectly fine person. Some of the prisoners of Fort Rozz were unjustly convicted, after all. 

This does not, in fact, reassure him at all. 

***

Alex is having a really, truly awful day. 

Her leg is burning like the time she dropped acid on it, probably because of the likely-venomous spine in her quadricep, she’s been hauled halfway across the city by a part-insect alien that eats DDT, and now some unfairly good-looking woman (not that she’s gay, she’s probably just jealous of the gorgeous walking goddess in front of her) who seems to move in a way carefully choreographed to show off her hair bouncing like a shampoo commercial as much as possible, is standing over her in a tight black catsuit (not that Alex looks at a lot of women in catsuits, well maybe Black Widow when she’s watching _The Avengers_ with Kara, and OK maybe she watches the scenes with Black Widow a lot, but she isn’t gay she just likes to compare those outfits to the DEO tactical outfits and make jokes about Scar-Jo’s cleavage and watch her perfect hair bounce, and the fact that she fantasizes about what Black Widow’s hair smells like is _entirely_ coincidental) that leaves none of her toned muscles and shapely curves to the imagination. 

Then she opens her mouth, and Alex’s day gets a whole lot worse. 

“You Humans are so fragile, it’s a wonder any of you make it out of infancy,” the woman chuckles, one finger stroking gently along Alex’s cheek, and of _course_ her voice is a smooth, high one that sounds like it was made for singing and pours from her lips like a brook from a spring. 

Alex’s eyes bug out almost comically, and she chokes, then sputters. Her _soulmate_ the gorgeous apparent would-be alien overlord raises a perfect eyebrow in ridiculously attractive concern mixed with surprise and amusement. Alex’s turbulent emotions, spurred on by the pain in her leg, settle on _anger_. 

“ _SERIOUSLY?_ Fucking _**you**? _I was expecting, I mean, I thought you were some kind of Venusian slime lizard with tentacles for legs or something, not a supermodel in a catsuit!” The woman’s eyes are wide and her jaw drops, but Alex is on a roll. “And what the _hell_ kind of first words to say to your soulmate are those, anyway? I spent half my life worrying that either my soulmate was going to pick me off of some rocks after a hang-gliding accident or that you were a total _creep_! And I get you, you unfairly beautiful freaking alien warlord, and we meet when I'm exhausted and my leg's busted and there's sweat running down the crack of my _ass_ and you first talk about how goddamn **_fragile_** I am and then you _stroke my cheek_ on our _first meeting_? I waited _fifteen years_ and spent all of elementary and most of middle school being ashamed of having no damn soulmark for _this_? If I could look away from your eyes and stand up I would slap you **_so_** hard you wouldn't know what hit you until you woke up in containment...” 

Just as Alex is _really_ starting to get into it, the wall explodes and the blue-and-red blur that is Alex’s alien sister tears through and slams into Alex’s insufferable alien soulmate (and she _is_ insufferable, this must be another mistake of the universe, Alex is _certain_ , and the butterflies in her stomach are _not_ attraction no matter what that sneaking voice in the back of her head says), sending both women flying clear across the old warehouse, through a wall, and into a support pillar. 

***

Astra’s carefully-constructed and maintained reasoning for her entire plan disintegrates in less than a minute. 

She is distressingly not upset about this. 

She and Kara get up, realize who they’re looking at, and take a moment to hug, then Kara asks why she is attacking Kara’s _sister_ and Astra is both confused and angry at Alura at the same time. Then Kara, young and hot-headed as she is, demands Astra’s surrender. 

Astra is about to make some suitably pithy quip and resume the fight when her soulmate stumbles and collapses through the Astra-shaped hole that Kara made in the wall. “Hey, Kara, could you wait a few hours to beat up my soulmate? She and I kinda need to have a heart-to-heart and I still have an alien spine in my…” She yelps in shock as the Hellgrammite grabs her from behind. 

Astra releases Kara without thinking, and both Kryptonians move like lightning to Astra’s soulmate’s side, and the Hellgrammite leaps back about twenty feet at the sight of the General moving in a blur, eyes glowing with heat. 

It doesn’t save him from a blow from Kara, sending him crashing through a wall and slumping with a groan to the ground. 

“…thanks,” Astra’s soulmate manages, and her leg gives out again as she tries to stand. 

“Your soulmate the creepy alien is my _aunt_?” Kara shrieks while helping her up, because obviously this is the most important matter right now. 

“My…Your _what_? Oh, _great_ …” The Human looks to Astra with an apologetic expression, and Astra feels her breath catch as she nearly loses herself in those soft brown eyes. “Uh, sorry for snapping at you, it’s been a _day_.” 

“And Aunt Astra, why were you _creeping on my sister_? She’s been kidnapped and hurt already today and she spent years worrying about you being a creepy space eel or something!” Kara continues, but Astra is oblivious. Her hand reaches out, stroking along the Human’s cheek again to cup her face, and the Human sighs and pushes gently into her, eyes dipping partially closed in spite of herself and the situation. Kara sputters to a halt, then begins shifting from foot to foot. 

“I am sorry, my brave Human,” Astra murmurs, her other arm supporting the woman as she wavers unsteadily on the injured leg. “Here, allow me to aid you. I am Astra, General Astra In-Ze of Krypton.” 

“Alex,” the woman replies, eyes opening wide, pupils dilated and face flushing deep red. “Uh, Alexandra Danvers. Of Earth.” 

“I’m just gonna…go check up on the bug guy,” Kara mutters, and flashes away from the two of them. 

Alex and Astra are too busy being soft useless lesbians to care. 


End file.
